[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WTBkj8gFfI[/youtube]
I remember this video being posted in the If you’re listening to music right now II thread by Joker (or Tyranus or whatever he’s calling himself these days). I got it for my latest mix. I was listening to it the other day and I was thinking about these lyrics:
“Go back to bed America; your government is in control again. Here, watch this. Shut up. You are free to do as we tell you! You are free to do as we tell you!”
And it struck me as a novel concept–the idea that we could be free and yet choose to do as we’re told.
I mean, most of the time, when this kind of topic comes up, the attitude tends to be that the government is tricking us into doing what they want us to do, or that it is controlling us, or brainwashing us–that we do what they tell us because we are not free, that it is their squashing of our freedom that allows them to make us do what they tell us.
But the above lyrics bring a whole new perspective to the same, often very real, phenomenon: that we do what the government (or media, or cultural norms, etc.) tell us to do because we’re actually choosing to–that we have freedom, complete freedom, and this is what we do with our freedom.
It’s like if you had the choice of whether to eat cake or eat straw–what would you choose? I would think that, hands down, most people would choose the cake 99% of the time. But does this mean they don’t have a choice? Did anyone force them to choose the cake? Is our slave-like drone-like following of what the authorities and the media and other influential powers tell us to do just what it is human nature to choose to do, when free, most of the time?